Baltimore Homicide Ends City’s 72-Hour Ceasefire

Community leaders say the ceasefire was a “call to action in order to save the city and community for our future generations.”

After activists in the city of Baltimore declared a 72-hour “ceasefire” to bring awareness to the alarming rates of violence, it was broken after a 24-year-old man was left slain on Saturday, reports the New York Daily News.

The ceasefire kicked off on Friday and local community activists hoped that it would last through Sunday, writes the outlet. Although police reported that there were no shooting deaths that occurred on Friday, two separate gun violence incidents took place on Saturday. Police say that a man, 24, was shot on Saturday evening and rushed to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center where he later died, reports the source.

Two hours prior to the incident, a 22-year-old was shot in the arm and suffered non-life threatening injuries. “There is a war going on in Baltimore right now. We are experiencing genocide among our African-American males, both by the hands of the Police Department and from one another,” wrote the collective of activists who organized the Baltimore Ceasefire on Facebook, according to the outlet. “We the people need a call to action in order to save the city and our community for our future generations.”

New York Daily News reports that Baltimore had 204 homicides by the end of July.

In June, the Baltimore police department announced that they will add more patrol cops after a surge in homicides.